Shifting the pack, I stopped for a long moment, thinking. With the legion. I had to do little of that, for there was always some officer to tell me what to do. Now I was entirely on my own. but I knew I must go cleverly. My size was a benefit, my training also, but I had seen bigger and better trained men than I surprised, ambushed, killed by small and tricky enemies. I did not want to find such opponents waiting for me along that terrible track. I felt the gorse, seeking a passage through. If I could find a spot that was sheltered from the wind and that ghostly mist. I might wrap myself in my cloak and wait out the night. Dawn might show me enemies, but they would not be invisible ones.

  A few steps along. I located a break, and I pushed through it and picked my way cautiously along amid the stickery growth. My thick leather sandals crushed smaller plants beneath them as I went, feeling before me with one hand and holding my blade in the other. Other beasts than men ranged the moors, I knew too well, though I had never traveled here before.

  As I probed a gorse bush with the sword the metal clanged against stone. I flinched, hoping it was not one of the forbidding menhirs that studded these lands. Or worse—another pillar like that in the road. Still. I wanted to know what faced me. so I slashed away the intervening growth and moved to lay my hand on the obstacle.

  This stone was as cold as death, damp with the mist. Slinging my sword. I felt along what seemed to be leaning slabs of stone—a barrow! I had run into a barrow here in the desolation, an ancient grave. I had no wish to make closer acquaintance with the long-dead tenant, yet this was the only reasonable hope of shelter. And I was—had been!—a soldier, son of a centurion. Fear was not something I could admit to easily.

  Kicking my way through a tangle of grass and weed, I moved around the thing, searching for a gap that would let me through into whatever shelter it might offer. When I found it, my hand slipped through into some space within. As I prepared to follow it, a grip as strong and relentless as death itself fastened upon my wrist and pulled me through a narrow opening into the musty barrow. Expecting even thicker darkness, I found to my surprise that a chill gleam lit the interior dimly, though after the darkness before it seemed quite bright.

  The ghostly glimmer showed a rude stone bier holding rubble that might once have been a corpse and its wrappings, but there was no sign of whoever—or whatever—had caught my wrist. Even as I began to relax, a whisper rustled through the confined space. “Outlander!” it breathed. “Slayer of my children’s children.”

  I stood as erect as the space allowed and grasped my sword with both hands. No sane man failed to fear the dead, but I was a soldier and the son of a soldier. I would not accept guilt not my own.

  “I am a Briton, though my father is Roman,” I protested. “I have killed no Britons, only raiding northerners or those who prey on travelers. My mother is a daughter of this soil, as am I. Do not hold me responsible for the misdeeds of those who came before me. Given that my mother’s folk have been here for many lives of men, I may be one of your descendants.”

  There came a soft gust of laughter. “I have watched these lands for time beyond remembering. I have seen the Picts driven out by the Romans, and they were nearer kin to me than your kind. Yet you are brave, and I respect that. You came to me this night, sent by means of the pillar my clan set in the road.” The voice gusted through that cold space, setting my teeth on edge and my skin to goose-pimpling.

  “This night I have need of a warrior, one skilled with the blade and able to stand against terrible foes. On this night, once again after the passage of two thousand winters, those who killed my children are doomed to return to the scene of their terrible action, and the spirits of my people must suffer again their dreadful deaths. So our gods will it, and thus it is fated. But this time I will send against them a warrior who will stand against the slayers, if you are the one and if you have the courage to cleanse this place of its ancient haunting.”

  I could feel unseen eyes examining me, a spirit, strong and incredibly old, measuring my determination and my abilities. A realization came to me that my life had been worthless, since the legions left our shores. No purpose drove me, no family depended on me for sustenance. Not even my horse was left as a responsibility. I was free to follow my own whim . . . or the needs of the slain.

  I was silent for a long while, considering the thing asked of me. What value had I to any living being? None that I could see. If I might serve this tormented spirit, my life and my training could justify themselves. A warrior without an army is useless, unless he stands alone against great evil. In my death I might serve more truly than I might have done in the legions of Rome.

  With a long sigh, I lowered my blade. “You have found your sacrifice,” I told the invisible spirit. “I will stand by that pillar and await what comes. Yet I doubt there is any chance that I might halt the force that will come there.”

  The atmosphere eased a bit, the chill lessening, the gleam becoming brighter. “It is well,” whispered the voice. “And there is a chance of survival. Stand your ground. Hold to your courage and your purpose. Many elements have worked together to bring you here on this night, and those things have not been without purpose. Work the will of the Goddess, and you may see the sun rise again.”

  Then the gleam died, the voice was gone, and I knew what I must do. I found my way out of the barrow and located the broken gorse marking my track. Following that, I found the road and moved along it to stand with my back to that pale pillar. This time I did not touch my skin to the stone, but its solidity against my back offered reassurance.

  I settled my pack and took both sword and knife in hand. I would wait until the marauding specters came—or did not come, as I began to think. Was I a fool or a dreamer? I leaned harder against the stone and drifted into a sort of doze. Almost I laughed, thinking I had been befooled by the mist and the strange air of the moor.

  Then I heard the clanking of metal and the thudding of feet on the track. The mist swirled aside, and I could see a blur of motion between the gorse thickets, glitters of brightness, pale shapes, half shadow and half moonlight, as the ensorcelled raiders approached. Though they were not real, they were there, and I knew I must face them in the name of my father, my mother, and the Goddess. Else I would deny my worthiness to call myself a man and a warrior.

  “Hold!” I cried, raising my blade and stepping forward. “No spirit will pass tonight to slay those who bide, unresting, on this moor.”

  There was a pause in the motion, and the shadows seemed to coalesce into a formidable mass. A gaunt shape moved toward me, and in its hand was a great axe, double-bitted and still holding the tint of blood.

  “We are doomed by the gods to re-enact our deeds on this night. Who dares to question our passage?”

  “I am Kerak, son of Rome and Britannia, once warrior of the legion of Flavius Severus. I am required by the Goddess to halt this cruel act and the sufferings of the spirits trapped here, face me, one or all. I will not let you pass.”

  As he moved forward, heat surged through my body, took control of my hands and my mind. Battle-fury, which I had not forgotten in the months since being left behind, governed me as I met the rush of that spectral leader, slashing my blade through his insubstantial body as he belabored me with the axe. Strangely, though I could feel his blows they drew no blood, nor did my strokes do more to him.

  We stood, face to face, our weapons busy, our hearts burning with rage. The ghostly horde took no part but drew about us, as if waiting for the outcome of our battle. I grew weary, my legs beginning to shake, my shoulders aching with the effort of my swordplay, and I began to wonder if any living man might meet the challenge of the untiring dead. Yet I strove, until he swung his axe widely, and I took advantage of the opening to thrust my knife straight into his blurred face.

  As the metal went in, I felt a shudder of departing energy, and the fleshless entity sank slowly, becoming a puddle of mist. Around us, the horde gave a sigh like a strong gust of wind and began to dissolve into individual columns of mist. Exhausted, my strength spent, I leaned against the pillar, which was no longer cold but gratefully warm.

  A breeze scented with gorse blossom rose and dissipated the last of the mist and the entire horde of accursed beings. I saw in the east the first dim line of light marking the dawn, and I sank beside that long-waiting pillar and slept.

  When I woke the moor was bright with noon, and no hint was there that it had ever been haunted. I gathered dead gorse and whin and burned poor Cam’s body, before searching along my crushed trail for the barrow I had found in the night.

  The stones were there, but they had long been sunk into the soil, and no one could have entered it to talk with the dead. Yet I knew what had happened to me, and I also understood that I was a warrior worth employing. I would, I decided, go across the Narrow Sea to Gaul and find some chieftain who might value one who had fought a battle with the dead . . . and won.

  A Penny a Word

  by Rick Klaw & Paul O. Miles

  It is sometimes shocking what occult information can be unearthed. While researching my family history, I discovered that my paternal great-grandfather Jacob Klau (d. 1933) wrote short fiction under the pseudonyms “S. B. H. Hurst” and “Bugs Sinnat.” His modest output produced in 1931-32 at least two known short stories for Weird Tales and one story for Oriental Tales. One of the stories “The Ball of Fire” appeared in the reprint anthology Oriental Stories edited by William H. Desmond, Diane and John Howard, and Robert K. Weiner (Odyssey Publications OP 3, 1975) and another, “The Splendid Lie,” was used in 100 Ghastly Little Ghost Stories edited by Stefan Dziemianowicz, Robert Weinberg, and Martin H. Greenberg (Barnes & Noble, 1993). For most of his life, Klau worked as a train conductor and there is strong evidence that he inspired Robert Bloch’s classic tale “That Hellbound Train.”

  Hungry for more information about my ancestor, I visited the Library of Congress. After a search through government documents turned up nothing further on my great-grandfather, on a whim I looked for Weird Tales. Below is the transcript of Vito (Sonny) DiCarlo’s shocking May 11, 1951 testimony before Estes Kefauver’s legendary Senate Special Committee to Investigate Crime in Interstate Commerce (aka The Kefauver Committee), the first such committee established to challenge organized crime. While DiCarlo’s statement may on the surface appear ludicrous, it does cast an interesting light on that generation of pulp writers especially Robert E. Howard, in whom Kefauver seemed to have a particular interest. The notes in parenthesis are mine. I also cleaned up some of the spelling inconsistencies.

  The key was the rejection letters. Early on, as the grift was on its first legs, we headed down to Greenwich Village to scope some writers out, get into their heads. A bigger group of smelly, redeyed lushes you never saw. And it was Tommy March (Antonio Marza b 1893, The Bronx) who figured out that writers like to be miserable. In fact, they didn’t trust praise or happiness; in the brothels, we trained the whores to build a man up—for this con, we needed to keep the rubes down. So for every story we accepted, we rejected two. And we kept the rejection letters formal, a sentence or two like we were saying: get this piece of shit story off the bottom of my shoe.

  By this time, what would be known as the Weird Tales grift had been running for the better part of three years. The Brooklyn mob loved it for its simplicity: create a “magazine”, invite submissions, then make the desperate rubes come over with the cash to see their pathetic stories in print. Charge ‘em a penny a word. We would have Ernie (Twelve Fingers) Bronk (Enchase Brazzio b. 1899 Queens, New York) print up 100 or so cheap copies, send the writers a few for their egos and bank the profits. We told the mooks if they sold enough to get into the black, then they’d see some cash—till then, spread the risk. We put an ad with a post office box in the back of The Saturday Evening Post, Adventure and other magazines and waited. The stories and the checks rolled in.

  In fact, we had to open a store up to the Empire State and hire a twist, Edie Weinraub, to run it as the secretary. Edie was nice on the eyes, and smart—went to Fordham for a year, even, but she was Dutchie Schultz’s cousin so everybody knew to keep hands off.

  She spent her days, letter opener in hand, slicing up the pile of manila envelopes and counting up the number of words in the stories to make sure the rubes didn’t try and short us. Every month or so, we’d pull a couple of them, get Sy Hurt (b. 1882, The Bronx) to paint a cover—who knew? Most of the time Sy was doing a different kind of painting—and mail the rag out to our marks to keep them on the hook.

  Weird Tales was the sweetest little con you ever knew: none of these backwater jerks were ever going to tumble to the fact they were being hiked—they just wanted to see their names on paper. And if they did, who gives a shit what some yokel from Fuckdale, Arkansas has to say, anyway?

  Then we got our first submission from Bob (Robert E.) Howard, who you were asking about. First thing, we checked on a map to make sure there was a Cross Plains in Texas since that sounded like the name some apple-cheeked G-Man might come up with to reel us in for mail fraud. Edie found it—a real getmethefuckoutofhere burg if I ever saw one. Edie opened the envelope and pulled out the story—and a few crumpled bills. Cash. I liked the boy immediately.

  We didn’t think anything of it, except this mook started to send new stories every week. To me, whatever, I’ll take your money any way you want to give it to me. Edie maybe was a little softer—one day after he’d been burying us in manus for a few months, I came in and she’s reading one. I told Edie you don’t have to be doing that, just count the words. Myself if I have to read, I go for the big boys: Norris, Lewis, Tarkington; all that sword and magic crap struck me as more than a little fruity, I’ll be honest with you. But Edie shrugged and said this Howard hayseed wasn’t half bad. To each her own.

  It was maybe four months later, she suggested that we might cut Howard a check. Normally paying writers goes against my religion, but she told me he was slowing down a bit, so I said okay, we’ll tell him one of the issues went into the black and wet his whistle. He could be a big man over the weekend and show the check around to his wheat farmer friends or whatever the hell they grow down there. She suggested we pay him for “Red Nails.”

  I said I didn’t give a fig.

  So she sent him a little something and the next time I was in the office Edie gives me the thumbs up—our boy Howie’s back on the bike. And I can tell by her expression maybe she’s got a little mad on for this boyo, but again, as long as he comes across with the jingle-jangle and stays way the hell away down in Texas, I didn’t care.

  It was around this time I had to go up to Canada on some business—if you ask me about it, I’ll take the fifth—and I was up there for maybe three months.

  When I hit the office again, I asked Edie how everything was going. Get this—this is why you don’t let dames into business. She’d gotten to thinking about her boy Bobbie and decided he needed some more encouragement. So she’d taken his stories—she kept them in a separate stack from all the others and had begun to hand them out to the boys when they visited the offices. And god-damn if some of those flat-nosed sons of bitches weren’t reading the things. I’m working this jukebox scam with Morrie Knuckles (b. 1905 Fort Greene, Brooklyn) and he starts in about Hyborea and some other nonsense this Howards writing about and some fight scene with Cumin (sic). I slapped Morrie hard in the mouth to get his head back onto our thing.

  Anyway, Edie’s idea was that if the boys like the stories—and they did—they could write Howard fan letters, if you can believe that. Like little fucking girls! You know, “I read your scintillating tale in such and such an issue and you are my favorite writer.” Jesus Christ!

  First, I told Edie, these crumbs can barely read, let alone write. Second, the grift is going so well, why screw with it?

  She just pouted and muttered under her breath than anyway the fellows liked them and what was the harm? Women! Jesus!

  So my boys’ heads were filled with swords and loinclothwearing bitches and Edie sat in that front office and had them tell her what they liked and then she typed up the fan letters, made up names, and sent them off to our associates in other cities for the postmarks to send off so this hayseed would think he had fans all over the country instead of just a bunch of mugs in Manhattan, New York.

  So that goes on for a while, a year or so. Then we get a letter from Howard asking for the address of H.P Lovecraft. Seem he liked his style and wanted to trade pointers. Only problem is there is no H.P. Lovecraft.

  Sometimes, in the early issues of Weird Tales, we’d have some extra space—some printer thing where when you go over a certain number of pages, you gotta add extra or you end up with blank space—anyway, we needed an extra story so this rummy ex-safecracker, Ira Mandelbaum (b. 1872, The Bronx), coughs up and says he’ll pitch in. This guy, who reeks of liquor and stale LSMFT, comes back a day later with the most lurid piece of trash, but it was 3 pages. We couldn’t use his real name: Ira’d done time. So Tommy March and me’re walking around, we see Lovecraft’s tavern down to Houston Street, he tosses in H.P. ’cause he says it sounds sophisticated. Done. And after that, anytime we need a space filler, Ira cranks out some story—personally, I couldn’t even read his shit—eldritch gods, Nyarlathotep, what the fuck?

  But anyway, H.P. Lovecraft is Ira Mandelbaum.

  So now Howard wants to write to “Lovecraft.” No way in hell I’m getting my prize pigeon in direct contact with Ira. He’ll screw up the deal, sure. Edie solves the problem for me—says she’ll be Lovecraft and write to Howard. So they start corresponding. We gave Howard a drop box address for the NE syndicate; they send his letter down to us, Edie returns a reply back up to them to mail to Texas. Perfect.

  One good thing about his letters to Lovecraft was that Howard opened up. He tells Lovecraft things he’d never tell Weird Tales ’cause we’re his bosses, savvy? So, in one letter, Howard mentions that he’s placed some stories about boxing and Edie thinks, “What the hell?”